The best parts were about his brother

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	• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers Vintage, 2001 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 907 reviews view larger image
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Touching.

Though my title may be typical, just know I don't typically review books on Amazon. This book is a rare exception in that I found it so touching that, despite my reading it over a year ago, I still remember how it affected me. I became so entwined in the storyline that it felt like I was a part of this disjointed and hilarious family (and after all, isn't that what reading is about? Escapism?). Even the prologue is funny, which is atypical. I thoroughly appreciated his humor and sometimes brutal honesty, and I'm sure everyone sees a little bit of themselves in the story.
According to the reviews, readers are pretty much torn between hating it and loving it. Maybe the ones that like it so much talked it up too much? For that, we are sorry, I'm sure. Some may not appreciate Dave Eggers, but I think he's fabulous. Enough said.

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The best parts were about his brother

The best parts were about his brother. I was strongly tempted to stop reading in order and just flip through the pages, looking for his name, thinking, why would anyone who could write like THAT leave all the rest of these words in here?

To me, a memoir ought to be so honest that you feel sort of embarassed for the narrator because they've exposed themselves so completely. This WAS really honest, but the narrator's eagerness to find fault with himself deflected the reader's ability to judge him, to find fault or not. He was protected by his own self-criticism, so I never felt close to him.

Having said that, any author who leaves himself open to being compared (contrasted) to Joyce is really *swearword* brave. In the last few pages, I finally felt like I was being allowed to decide how to feel about him.

Also: why does he refuse to use the word "whom"? What is that about?

The title had the same sort of effect on me as the gold circle remarking that it was up for the Pulitzer Prize -- that is, without any suspicion or cynicism, I totally expected to love it and I only liked it very much.

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Goot 'til the end

Eggers work is quite entertaining throughout. He truly captured the random way that the mind works during extreme circumstances. My issue with the book is the ending which essentially makes the whole story worthless. I believe that one of the reasons we read memoir's is to learn a lesson from another person. This book finishes without that lesson. Perhaps that is the authors intent but it does leave you empty. However, I cannot lambaste the entire book as the writing up to that point is excellent and truly captivating.

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist?

Reviews of this book seem to occupy mostly the extremes: readers either loved it or hated it. I place it somewhere in between even though I cannot recommend this book for anything other than as an example of the creative use of grammar and punctuation.

This reads like Generation X literature, harkening back to the early 90s books of Douglas Coupland, books in which angst is spread around like manure in search of a pasture; literature defining a group of people who have never had to fight or struggle for anything more than their own descents into hedonism. And this may be the point that Dave Eggers is trying to make, that of angst in search of a reason, much as Holden Caulfield clumsily stumbled around over half a century ago, but the reader just can't tell for sure.

For the reader, this book is one insult after another, an exercise in how much abuse the reader will endure in order to serve the narcissism of the author. Beginning on the title page are passages of absolute self indulgence, which do not end there but go on and on through the preface and acknowledgements as well. I put this book down several times, debated with myself whether or not Dave Eggers was using these insulting devices as a means to make a statement and tell his story, or whether he is a con man who has managed to pull off a pretty good literary scam. Back and forth, a unique use of language, true, but in the end there is no story here; there is nothing but page after page of vacuousness as the characters fulfill their missions of delayed maturity. And so I finally put the book down--for good.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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